After dinner, of course, the Vicomte immediately came to me.  Here the men leave the dining-room with us, like in France, and the Vicomte did not even go back with the others to smoke.  But it was all done in such a clever way it attracted no attention.

Jack Brandon had turned up, you know, Lord Felixtowe’s brother:  he came with some people with whom he is spending the Sunday, and his methods to speak with the lady he admires were so different to the Vicomte’s.  Of course he had that extraordinary sans-gene of all those men, that absolute unselfconsciousness which is not aware there is anyone else in the room but himself and the lady he is bent upon; but instead of being discreet, and making a semblance of taking an interest in the rest of the company, as the Vicomte did, he just sprawled into a chair near her, monopolised her conversation, and stared blankly in front of him whenever she spoke to any one else.  And Tom was doing almost the same by Valerie.  It is undoubtedly this quality of perfect ease and unconscious insolence which for some unaccountable reason is attractive in Englishmen.  If it were assumed it would be insupportable impertinence, but as you know, Mamma, it is not in the least.  They are perfectly unconscious of their behaviour; it is just that there is one woman they want to speak to in a room, so that is all they see; the rest of the people are merely furniture.  Now, American men are always polite and unselfish, and almost self-conscious where women are concerned, whereas the French have too polished manners naturally to allow them to forget the general company.

I tried to keep Gaston from making love to me, and when he would go on, I said it bored me to death, and if he wanted to remain friends with me he must simply amuse me; and then to tease him I got up and went and talked to the Western senator.  He had such a quizzical entertaining look in his keen eye—­he was being stiffly deferential to one of the ladies, a Mrs. Welsh, who was talking to him so brightly.  It looked like a huge mastiff allowing a teeny griffon to play with it.

“They’re bright as paint,” he said to me when we sat down on a sofa, pointing to Mrs. Welsh.  “Dainty, pretty creatures.  I don’t think women want brains, not man’s brains, anyway.”  I am sure you would agree with this, Mamma, and I am sure he is right.

I said to him how extraordinarily generous all American husbands and fathers seemed to their women-kind, and what lovely clothes they had, and what heaps of money they must spend on them; and he said, “By the Lord, why shouldn’t they?  What’s the use of money but to spend, and if that’s what makes them happy, let ’em.”  Then he added, “I’m always grateful and kind of devotional towards women.  It’s only through them we ever get a taste of heaven on this used-up old earth, and it doesn’t matter how low they’ve sunk, any of ’em would die for the man they really love.  Whenever I hear a man speak a disparaging word of a woman, I know, no matter what his other qualifications are, he’s a mean yellow dog underneath.”